‘Queer Eye’ culture expert Karamo Brown has backed calls for Netflix to improve the subtitles it offers for fans who are deaf or hard-of-hearing.
Twitter user Rogan Shannon posted about the poor quality of the subtitles earlier this week, explaining that the captions used for ‘Queer Eye’ are not word-for-word, with profanities being removed and sentences being “cleaned up” for clarity.
He wrote: “I want to know why you don’t caption every single word. I can see what people are saying not matching up with the captions. Also, pardon me, but DO NOT FUCKING CENSOR PEOPLE.
“I want to know what is said word. for. word. That’s the whole fucking point of captions.”
“If someone is speaking AAVE [African-American Vernacular English], DO IT WORD FOR WORD. Don’t “clean it up,” that’s insulting. If someone isn’t speaking “perfect” English, don’t fucking change it. If they umm, uhh, stammer, I WANT THAT TOO. I. Want. Word. For. Word.
“Be precise and convey exactly what they say, don’t censor or clean up their “broken” language. If they swear and the sound isn’t censored, DO NOT CENSOR THE CAPTIONS. I’m so over hearing privilege and whitewashing.”
Rogan’s posts received a lot of attention and after being retweeted almost 2,500 times, Karamo threw his weight behind the calls for Netflix to rectify things.
Quote-tweeting another user who had also tweeted about the matter, he wrote: “Reading everyone’s comments breaks my heart. I don’t know how much power I have but know, the next time I’m at Netflix I’m going to bring up this issue internally & won’t stop until something changes. Deaf & HOH people should have the same experience as everyone else!”
Netflix then confirmed that they are looking into the issue, reassuring fans: “We’re fixing it.”
Earlier this year, Karamo made an adjustment to the way he posts on Instagram, explaining that he would be adding captions to all of his videos, to make them accessible for “my deaf or hard of hearing friends”.
“Friends, #AsACulture I’ve noticed that when it comes to supporting people living with a disabilities... we often don’t think how we can show up or support them unless they are in our family or are a close friend,” he wrote. “So I’m committing to making small changes in my life to support my disabled brothers and sisters.”